MacGyver - Large Blade - Review

It seems that nothing went right for the team in this week's episode.

Mac and the team's job is to bring home Victor, a war criminal from Kazakhstan, however, Victor's friends send missiles to their helicopter and they crash. Victor is on the loose in the forest and Cynthia has obtained a broken tibia from the crash. Cynthia lets the guys know she has a cell phone in her bag which magically is the furthest thing away from the crash site in a river.

While Mac, Jack, and Cynthia are trying to find there was through the forest Bozer and Riley are back at The Phoenix Foundation's office making a call fo CIA for a look out the team. It seems like both have taken on Thorton's office job for now. It was great to see the 'emotional' side of Riley. I put it in quotation marks because technically she didn't get emotionally, more worried about her friends than anything. Tristan Mays' acting throughout this series has been flawless, along with George Eads, but in this scene, you could really see the emotion that Mays' puts into Riley's character.

Mac, Jack, and Cynthia see CIA's helicopters and decide to try and get their attention, however, Cynthia has a turn for the worst and they have to build a fire to keep her alive. The one problem is that the fire will draw wanted and unwanted attention to them from the CIA and Victor's friends. Mac goes back after Victor who is still in the forest with Jacks gun. Once captured and leashed, Mac checks on the phone, however, he used the battery to make the fire for Cynthia.

Mac uses his knowledge of electricity to charge the battery by using handcuffs, a bottle, and a large blade through the middle. Mac lets Jack know he could die doing this (doesn't he always, though?) and it was great to see the brotherly love between them when Jack says he doesn't love Mac. Once the lightning hits the bottle, I LOVED the use of the tinnitus trope/effect after the explosion and how it makes you feel like you were there.

The team is rescued and brought back to LA, can someone also explain why the bridging shots were so long and why it was surfers? I''m pretty sure that's nothing to do with the story? I thought it was very weird to have multiple (5 or 6) between the scenes.

Anyway, we finally get to meet Matilda 'Matty' Webber; their new boss. First off, I got to say that if I didn't know who the actress (Meredith Eaton) was, I would have pictured Matty has this stern, looks like she could kill someone with a stare woman (think wrestler Nia Jax). I can't wait to see more of Matty in the upcoming episodes. We have only seen 1 minute and 7 seconds of her but I think she might be my favorite character so far. She is so witty and sassy yet stern and truthful and it's brilliant. She is so much better than Thornton.

There were quite a few Mac hacks in this episode, all were great but the few that stood out the most were, obviously capturing lightening in a bottle, using bark to draw moisture out of a phone, and making a crutch for Cynthia.

overall, it was a good follow up episode but it would have been nice to have a little connection to last week's episode as it felt like that didn't happen at all.

rating: 8.5/10